This article is written by Mariam Cook, founder of PositionDial. She was a speaker at Polis 2014 and also gave a Lunchtime Talk in Michaelmas 2014, a student review of which can be seen here.

PositionDial is a new way of working out your political position, keeping up to date with news and views from all sides, and seeing who matches. How it works is you agree or disagree with statements such as “we can’t afford to pay for the NHS” to build a unique, dynamic representation of where you stand. Once you have your PositionDial, you can see tailored media recommendations – and who matches your Position.

Around four months ago I demo-ed PositionDial to some super-engaged LSE students and guests at a Polis lunchtime talk. I say super-engaged as it really was a dream crowd: testing out our web app, asking challenging questions, tweeting and blogging with great ideas on making PositionDial better and better. I took two major themes from what people were most passionate about that day:

Matching: sharing and comparing, especially with friends and the wider public

Learning: providing flexible opportunities to learn about issues as you go along

And we’ve acted on it. PositionDial has developed to simultaneously enable people to see where they stand and become better informed. As well as expanding the ‘matches’.